Best SF Stories from New Worlds 5

Best SF Stories from New Worlds #5

by Michael Moorcock (Editor)

Panther, 1967. British mass market paperback. Anthology of stories from New Worlds magazine. Authors include Aldiss, Zelazny, Disch, J. G. Ballard, Brunner and others.

Genres: Science Fiction

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Michael John Moorcock is an English writer primarily of science fiction and fantasy who has also published a number of literary novels.

Moorcock has mentioned The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Apple Cart by George Bernard Shaw and The Constable of St. Nicholas by Edward Lester Arnold as the first three books which captured his imagination. He became editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1956, at the age of sixteen, and later moved on to edit Sexton Blake Library. As editor of the controversial British science fiction magazine New Worlds, from May 1964 until March 1971 and then again from 1976 to 1996, Moorcock fostered the development of the science fiction "New Wave" in the UK and indirectly in the United States. His serialization of Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron was notorious for causing British MPs to condemn in Parliament the Arts Council's funding of the magazine.

During this time, he occasionally wrote under the pseudonym of "James Colvin," a "house pseudonym" used by other critics on New Worlds. A spoof obituary of Colvin appeared in New Worlds #197 (January 1970), written by "William Barclay" (another Moorcock pseudonym). Moorcock, indeed, makes much use of the initials "JC", and not entirely coincidentally these are also the initials of Jesus Christ, the subject of his 1967 Nebula award-winning novella Behold the Man, which tells the story of Karl Glogauer, a time-traveller who takes on the role of Christ. They are also the initials of various "Eternal Champion" Moorcock characters such as Jerry Cornelius, Jerry Cornell and Jherek Carnelian. In more recent years, Moorcock has taken to using "Warwick Colvin, Jr." as yet another pseudonym, particularly in his Second Ether fiction.

Reviews

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another 'Best SF Stories from New Worlds', this Berkeley paperback edition contains works from the usual suspects (Ballard, Aldiss, Jones), only this time the wonders of seeding human intellect and innovation throughout the universe has buckled with a finite dose of entropy. This collection stands right in the inferno of the counterculture boom, however the age of aquarius was quickly shedding its skin by 1967, and this collection is an example of the genre exposing not only flesh and bone, but the psychology of the grotesque and the hopeless.

The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde • [Jerry Cornelius] • (1969) • short story by Norman Spinrad - Spinrad is one of those authors who can break the stratospheres of the genre's confines, but one who can derail his own glories by indulging in wise-ass slang and ribald gut-punches. Lines like, "Mao Tse Tung eats the hairy canary!" can derail a great story, as if Spinrad unabashedly farted in a crowded elevator. This story has what it takes to be a classic. Sadly, this revolution can't fully be taken seriously with too much self-indulgence on Spinrad's part.

The Death Module • (1967) • short story by J. G. Ballard (variant of Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown) - what New Worlds collection wouldn't be complete without a Ballard cut-up? More of his bourgeouis scientists, astronauts and artists stranded in chrome and sand landscapes. Essential although repetitive.

The Last Inn on the Road • (1967) • short story by Dannie Plachta and Roger Zelazny - phenomenally strange tale about a priest and a young woman trying to find a shelter for one meager night's sleep, but with predators on motorbikes prowling the avenues and alleyways, can they manage at least one moment of respite? Of course not. Haunting.

The Spectrum • (1969) • poem by D. M. Thomas - Thomas seems hit or miss, but here shows a world off its axis, time and space losing their grasp and humans suffering some erroneous, unexplainable shift.

The Tennyson Effect • (1966) • short story by Graham Hall [as by Graham M. Hall] - the moonbase of Alpha is under threat from alien forces that arise from the scientists/artists themselves, a timebomb of id pretensions and downright vainglory. Space has no room for soliloquies. Let the poets perish. Very solid.

The Serpent of Kundalini • [Colin Charteris] • (1968) • short story by Brian W. Aldiss - Moorcock had Jerry Cornelius. Aldiss had Charteris. Here in this magnificent short, Charteris is victim to the acid bombs that have crippled Europe. His personality has shifted the spectrum and he's high as a fucking kite. How do you not only handle yourself through an LSD apocalypse, but the doppelgangers that keep tapping your shoulder before slipping away off the tarmac?

Mars Pastorale or I'm Fertile, Said Felix • (1967) • short story by Peter Tate - really special tale about a bittersweet poet on a terraformed Mars, finding his link with his imagined earth evaporating into doubt - as he tries to write his opus prose in a planet disguised from memory. Once he starts developing allergies to all plant life, he must stay indoors as he tries to write his opus? Art can't save the individual, only transform them.

Biographical Note on Ludwig Van Beethoven II • (1968) • short story by Langdon Jones - Jones is always interesting. Here he takes on a Beethoven who can't catch a break. Doomscript played as comedy. Another artist suffers his own future. Quite solid.

A Landscape of Shallows • (1968) • short story by Christopher Finch - a wealthy couple roam about on holiday with nowhere to go and nothing to do. A computer hivemind teases its prey but for what reason, the reader never knows. Some tarnished beauty in this, but perhaps the story itself is as empty as it's intended to be.

Scream • (1968) • short story by Giles Gordon - the sole bomb of the collection. Pretentious drivel in cut-up fashion. No meat, just annoying fat of a highbrow git playing with words and structure as if he's read Burroughs for the first time and thinks he can do better. No!

The Rodent Laboratory • (1966) • short story by Charles Platt - a most brilliant metaphor on science, exclusion, overpopulation and mind control. A rat farm is under study by scientists. The more the rats are overcrowded, the more they unify to some subliminal violent end. What derails the wonders of this tale is the climax itself, where scientists explain what happened in detail. A flabbergasted end to what could have been a classic.

Can't go wrong with New Worlds, one of the more experimental of the series. And definitely worth checking out.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

First off, this isn't a science fiction collection. No matter what the cover may try and tell you. To even call this speculative fiction would be a stretch. This collection, unfortunately, is the perfect example of what most people tend to think science fiction writing is, impenetrable and pretentious. The majority of these stories tend to meander and become too abstract that by the time you finish, you are left wondering what the hell that was all about.
That's not to say there wasn't a couple of good stories in here, 2 stand out of the 11 featured here:
Biographical Notes On Ludwig Van Beethoven II by Langdon Jones is one of the best and most humourous Alternative History stories I've ever had the pleasure to read, well researched with actual musical notation included in the text.
The Rodent Laboratory by Charles Platt is also a well written story about over crowding and its effects on society.
If you can find these 2 stories anywhere else please do, if not, and you can get this collection cheap, pick it up.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

After graduating from seminary in the spring of '78 I stayed in New York until the beginning of August, earning money from a work-study job as a security guard there that I'd had since beginning there in '74. Summers were good. Staffing was difficult. A lot of overtime was available.

Prior to that spring I had intended to stay in New York. I'd found an affordable place to live with friends on the south side of Morningside Heights, had taken the federal civil service examination for jobs in my field (psychology)in the area and was expecting to get further training at The Institutes for Religion and Health, maybe also a Masters in Sacred Theology from the school I'd just graduated from, Union Theological Seminary.

Meeting Linda Sue Harrington while home for the previous Christmas and then developing a relationship with her through correspondence and, then, regular visits changed all of that. By the time she came to my graduation I had determined to drop everything and move back to Chicago where she was. I told my friends on West End to look for another roommate. I told the Institute to withdraw my application. I rented an Econoline Van and drove all my stuff back to a friend's mother's attic in Park Ridge, storing it there until I got back from a planned five week visit with Mother and family in Norway.

On my last visit to Chicago before Norway and permanent resettlement, Linda met me at O'Hare Airport and announced that she thought she was in love--with another guy! I was stunned speechless. Driving me to her garden apartment on Ainslee where I was scheduled to spend the next several days prior to the European trip, she suggested I go visit her neighbor Bethany while she went out that night on a date with that other guy. I did. It wasn't fun.

The next days were terrible. We hardly spoke. She was polite but distant. I was inhibited by amazement and by incomprehending depression. How was this possible? Why didn't she tell me this before I took the steps to move permanently? Why didn't she tell me this at least before I bought the ticket for this last visit before my move?

Finally, I decided I'd had enough, called my old friend Martin and went up to grandmother's cottage in Michigan with him for the last days of my scheduled stay in Chicago, talking his patient ear off about recent events and my confused reactions to them.

Somewhere amidst all of this I read this collection. It was probably very good...

[Isabel (kittiwake) · Rating 4 out of 5]

But on Friday, the scarlet lipstick you produced
as you prepared to leave me
Turned black on your lips;

On Saturday, your skirt was no longer orange;

On Sunday, the moon was blue;

On Monday, we crossed a city
Where contrite hymnsinging
Shook the stadium:
We could not tell
Whether the streetlights said Go:
Till we reached the no-speedlimit sign
Tears did not cease to run
Your eye shadow was not green but ash;
Tuesday, the sky was grey, with a black sun;

And today, at noon, there is no colour anywhere
Except the purple of your suspenderbelt
from "The Spectrum"

Published in 1969, this is a collection of ten short stories and one poem that appeared in New Worlds magazine. My favourites included "The Tennyson Effect" by Graham M Hall and "The Spectrum" by D. M. Thomas, but the story I liked most of all was "The Serpent of Kundalini" by Brian W. Aldiss. I have read a few other stories in which whole populations have been sent crazy, and seem to be living in a psychedelic, hallucinogenic world. In "The Serpent of Kundalini" Europe has been devastated by psychochemical bombs, but in other stores there have been some quite different causes for the madness.

He still heard breathing, movement of clothes, the writhing of toes inside shoe-caps. But these were not his. They belonged to the Charteris in the car, the undiscarded I. He no longer breathed.
As he huddled over the arrow, gulls tumbled from the cliff and sank into the water. Over the sea, the ship came. Up the hill, motors sounded. In the head, barefoot, a new age.
There had been a war, a dislocation.